Information for Authors

Editorial Policies

Hepatology Forum (HF) is the double-blind peer-reviewed, open access, international official journal of Turkish Association for the Study of the Liver (TASL). Yearly four issues of the journal are being published (January, April, July and October). The journals publication language is English.

The Hepatology Forum aims to publish original articles, review articles, editorials, case reports and correspondence (letters to the editor) on clinical and basic research in the field of hepatology.

All manuscripts must be submitted via the online submission system, which is available both at www.hepatologyforum.com and www.hepatologyforum.org. All articles published by Hepatology Forum are made freely accessible online immediately upon publication. The journals technical information required forms and instructions to authors are available on the journal’s web page and processing and publication of a submitted manuscript is free of all charges.

The journal is in agreement with the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing (doaj.org/bestpractice). The editorial and publication processes of the journal are shaped in accordance with the guidelines of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), Council of Science Editors (CSE), Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), World Association of Medical Editors (WAME), National Information Standards Organization (NISO) and European Association of Science Editors (EASE). Statements published in the journal reflect the views of the author(s) and not the opinions of the TASL, editors, editorial board, and/or publisher.  TASL, editors, editorial board, and/or publisher do not disclaim any responsibility or liability for such materials.

Manuscripts submitted for evaluation should not have been previously presented or already published in an electronic or printed medium. Manuscripts submitted to the Hepatology Forum will be evaluated through a double-blind peer-review process. Each submission will be reviewed by at least two external, independent peer reviewers. The Editor in Chief is the final authority to decide for publication for all submissions. The editorial board will invite an external and independent editor to manage the evaluation processes of manuscripts submitted by editors or by the editorial board members of the journal.

An approval report from the Ethics Committee in accordance with international agreements (World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki “Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Subjects,” amended in October 2013, www.wma.net) is required for drug studies, clinical and experimental studies and for some case reports. Ethics committee report or a similar official document may be asked from the authors if required. Materials and Methods section of the manuscript should include the information on patient consent, the name of the ethics committee, and the ethics committee approval number. For the experimental research studies conducted on humans, a statement declaring that written informed consent from the patients and volunteers was obtained before the procedures that they may undergo.

Manuscripts reporting experiments using animals must include a statement giving assurance that all animals received human care and that study protocols comply with the institution's guidelines. Studies involving animal experiments should conform to the Animal Research: Reporting of In Vivo Experiments (ARRIVE) guidelines (http://www.nc3rs.org.uk/arrive-guidelines), developed by the National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement and Reduction of Animals in Research (NC3Rs) to improve standards and reporting of animal research. Please review the ARRIVE checklist and disclose all relevant animal research information as directed. For the studies that was performed on animals; a statement such as “all measures were taken to prevent pain and suffering of the animals” should be declared.

All submissions evaluated by the journal are screened by a similarity detection software (iThenticate by CrossCheck). The Editorial Board will act in accordance with COPE guidelines in the event of alleged or suspected research misconduct, e.g., plagiarism, citation manipulation, and data falsification/fabrication.

Each individual listed as an author should fulfil the authorship criteria recommended by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE - www.icmje.org). The authorship should be based on the following all 4 criteria: (i) Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work and  (ii) Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content and (iii) Final approval of the version to be published and (iv) Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved. All those designated as authors should meet all four criteria for authorship, and all who meet the four criteria should be identified as authors.

The corresponding author is the one individual who takes primary responsibility for communication with the journal during the manuscript submission, peer review, and publication process, and typically ensures that all the journal’s administrative requirements, such as providing details of authorship, ethics committee approval, clinical trial registration documentation, and gathering conflict of interest forms and statements, are properly completed, although these duties may be delegated to one or more co-authors. The corresponding author should be available throughout the submission and peer review process to respond to editorial queries in a timely way and should be available after publication to respond to critiques of the work and cooperate with any requests from the journal for data or additional information should questions about the paper arise after publication. Although the corresponding author has primary responsibility for correspondence with the journal, the ICMJE recommends that editors send copies of all correspondence to all listed authors.

When authors submit a manuscript (of any type), they are responsible for disclosing all financial and personal relationships that might bias or be seen to bias their work. Hepatology Forum wants the authors to disclose any existing or potential conflicts of interests, including financial, consultant, and institutional relationships that might lead to potential bias or a conflict of interest. Any financial grants or other support received for a submitted study from individuals or institutions should be disclosed to the Editorial Board. The ICMJE Potential Conflict of Interest Disclosure Form should be filled in and submitted by all contributing authors.

If the article is accepted by the journal, authors will be asked to complete and send the 'Journal Publishing Agreement' which contains forms for copyright assignment, financial disclosures and authorship responsibility. An e-mail will be sent to the corresponding author confirming receipt of the manuscript together with a 'Journal Publishing Agreement' form or a link to the online version of this agreement. If these forms are not sent to the Editorial office via e-mail or fax the manuscript will not be published.

All material to be considered for publication in Hepatology Forum must be submitted in electronic form via the Journal's online submission system. Once you have prepared your manuscript according to the Instructions below, please visit the online submission system here or instructions on how to submit your manuscript online please click here.

Preparing your manuscript

I-TYPES OF MANUSCRIPTS

Original manuscripts

They should not exceed 3500 words, including the abstract, references, tables, and figure legends. A maximum of 8 tables and/or figures is allowed. References should not exceed a maximum of 30.

Review articles

The maximum length is 5000 words. The inclusion of a maximum of 8 high quality tables and/or colored figures to summarize critical points is highly desirable. Reviews should include 5 to 10 key points that briefly summarize or highlight the main content of the article. References should not exceed a maximum of 150.

Editorials

This section consists of invited editorial comments on articles published in the Hepatology Forum. The length of an editorial should not exceed 1500 words and 1 table or 1 figure is allowed. References should not exceed a maximum of 15.

Case reports

The length of a case report should not exceed 1500 words. A total number of 2 tables or figures is allowed. References should not exceed a maximum of 10.

Correspondence (Letters to the Editor)

Letters to the Editor will be considered for publication if they are related to articles published in recent issues of the Hepatology Forum. The length of a Letter to the Editor should not exceed 800 words. A total number of 1 table or figure is allowed. References should not exceed a maximum of 10.

Table 1. Limitations for each manuscript type

II-ARTICLE STRUCTURE

The manuscript must be arranged as follows:

• Title page
• Abstract in the Hepatology Forum format, including a lay summary
• Introduction
• Materials and methods (or Patients and methods)
• Results
• Discussion
• Acknowledgements
• References
• Tables
• Figure legends
• Figures

Title page

A title page must be provided for all submissions The title page should consist of all the following headings:

• Title: no more than 130 characters. Please refrain from using abbreviations in the title that may not be possible for the wide readership of the Hepatology Forum. The title of an accepted article may be modified by the editors.
• Authors: a list of all authors with first and surnames. Author names should be spelled out.
• Affiliations: names of department(s) and institution(s) of all authors
• Corresponding author: name, address, telephone and fax numbers, and electronic mail address.
• Keywords: a minimum of three and maximum of 6 keywords. UThese keywords will be used for indexing purposes. Please refer to https://www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/MeSHonDemand.html to compile a comprehensive list of keywords
• Electronic word count
• Number of tables and figures
• Conflict of interest statement: a statement to declare any conflict of interest. For further information see our Conflict of interest section
• Financial support statement: a statement of all authors' financial support given in order to complete the study or write the manuscript. See the Financial disclosure section
• Authors contributions: a list of the authors' contributions to the study; concept and design, experiments and procedures; writing of article etc.
• Clinical trial number (if available)

Abstract

Abstracts should be no longer than 275 words. Non-standard abbreviations, footnotes or references should not be used in the abstract. An electronic word count of the abstract must be included at the end of the abstract section.

Case reports, Reviews, Special section articles, and Letters to the Editor do not require a structured abstract.

A structured abstract, should have the following layout:

• Background & Aims: Should state the main aim or objective of the study
• Materials and Methods: Essential information on the methods used, including details of the study design (e.g. randomized controlled trial, cross sectional study, cohort study, case series, etc.); study location (primary or tertiary care setting, hospital, general community, etc.); number of participants and the way they were selected; intervention, the method of administration and the duration
• Results: The key findings of the study (such as absolute values, confidence intervals, p values etc.) should be mentioned in this section
• Conclusions: Concise summary and the important finding of the study should be mentioned with a maximum of 2 sentences.

Introduction

State the objectives of the work and provide an adequate background, avoiding a detailed literature survey or a summary of the results. This section should also include a study objective and hypotheses paragraph.

Materials/Patients and methods

All original manuscripts must provide a methods section that highlights the method the study was performed. Methods that has previously been published should be indicated by a reference. The manuscripts should include a description of the design, measurement and collection of data, type and source of subjects, inclusion and exclusion criteria and measures of outcome, number of subjects studied and why this number was chosen. The baseline characteristics of any compared groups should be described in detail and, if necessary, adjusted for in the analysis of the outcome. Please refer to our Statistics section for statistical methods required for publication and our Editorial policies section below for providing details on statistics and relation to animal and human trials, drugs and chemicals.

For all manuscripts reporting animal experimentation the authors must state a statement referring to the above guidelines mentioned in the editorial policy section and with a statement on institutional approval and where applicable:

– The strain and sex should be reported, if both male and female animals that were used

– Genetic background of the animals used

– In relation to cell cultures and tissue samples the sex of the animals

– State the transgenic or genetic mouse model used, and what control mice were used

– Housing of animals, cage system, enriched environment, diet, food, light or dark cycle.

Results

Results should be concise, explained and illustrated by using Tables and Figures. There is a maximum of 8 tables and/or figures per original article. Please refer to tables and figures formatting section.

Discussion

The discussion section should provide a summary of the key results and discuss the scientific importance of the findings of the original work. It should also include supportive knowledge and comparison of the new findings to the previously published literature.

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements should be in a separate section at the end of the article before the references. People who provided help during the research should be listed in this section.

Formatting of text

The submitted manuscript must be typed double-spaced throughout and pages numbered (including references, tables and figure legends). Preferably using a "standard" font (we prefer Times/Arial 12). For mathematical symbols, Greek letters, and other special characters, use normal text.

Language

Please write your text in good English. Authors who feel their English language manuscript may require editing could inform the editorial office for further editing.

Formatting of tables

Tables should be provided as Word files (*.doc) compatible files. No TIFF, JPG, PDF or PowerPoint files are acceptable. When submitting tables in Microsoft Word use the table function, no tab, space or colors should be used. Tables should contain a maximum of 10 columns. Tables should include a table number, title (in bold), table legend, and if necessary, footnotes (including any abbreviations). Include tables in the submitted manuscript as a separate section at the end of the manuscript.

Formatting of figures

All graphics submitted to the Hepatology Forum should be sent at their actual size, which is 100% of their print dimension and in portrait orientation.

• Figures should be supplied in the following preferred file formats: PDF (*.pdf), PowerPoint (*.ppt), Adobe Illustrator (*.ai, *.eps), Photoshop (*.psd) files in grayscales or in RGB color mode. Figures should be sent in an editable format, and not compressed into a .ppt or .pdf file. Figures should not be sent in JPG (*.jpg) format.
• Photographs (scans, immunofluorescences, EM, and histology images) should be submitted as: 1) TIFF (*.tif) with a resolution of at least 300 pixels per inch; or 2) Illustrator compatible EPS files with RGB color management (*.eps); or 3) Photoshop (*.psd) or editable PDF (*.pdf) files (grayscales or RGB) at the appropriate resolution which is: 300 dpi for color figures, 600 dpi for black and white figures and 1200 dpi for line-art figures

Photographs of identifiable patients should be accompanied by written permission to publish from patient(s).

Panel lettering should be in Arial bold 14 pt, capitalized and no full stop (A, B) while lettering in figures (axes, conditions), should be in Arial 8 pt, lower case type with the first letter capitalized and no full stop. No type should be smaller than 6 pt.

If after acceptance the quality of the figures does not match the standards of Hepatology Forum, the authors will be asked to resubmit the figures at the required quality.

Figure legends

Figure legends should be listed one after the other, as part of the text document, separate from the figure files. Please do not write a legend below each figure.

Each figure legend should have a brief overarching title (in bold with figure number) that does not exceed 100 words and describes the entire figure.

The statistical test used as well as the values of statistical significance (whether significant or not) should always be included in the figure legends.

The abbreviated word for figure "Fig." should be typed and bolded, followed by the figure number and a period (i.e., "Fig. 1."). Every figure legend should have a title written in bold. If a figure contains multiple sections (i.e., A, B, C, D) the letter for these subsections should be in capital letters, and should be surrounded by parenthesis [i.e., (A)…(B)…(C)…(D)]. Figures should be numbered according to the order which they were cited.

An example of how a figure caption should look:

Fig. 1. Serum ALT levels of patient who were HCV+, HBV+, or controls. (A) Mean serum levels (bars represent SD and bold lines inside the box plot median levels). Levels of significance: *p = 0.032; ˆ p = 0.003. (B)….

References

Responsibility for the accuracy of bibliographic citations lies entirely with the authors. If an ahead-of-print publication is cited, the DOI number should be provided. When there are six or fewer authors, all authors should be listed. If there are seven or more authors, the first six authors should be listed followed by “et al.”

An example of how references should look within the text:

HVPG was measured by hepatic vein catheterization using a balloon catheter according to a procedure described elsewhere[10,11] and used as an index of portal hypertension.16

An example of how the reference list should look:

[10] Lok AS, Zoulim F, Dusheiko G, Ghany MG. Hepatitis B cure: From discovery to regulatory approval. Hepatology 2017;66(4):1296-1313.

[11] Lok AS, McMahon BJ, Brown RS Jr, Wong JB, Ahmed AT, Farah W, et al. Antiviral therapy for chronic hepatitis B viral infection in adults: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Hepatology 2016;63(1):284-306.

Citation in text

References are ordered as they appear in the text. All articles in the list of references should be cited in the text and, conversely, all references cited in the text must be included in the list. Personal communications and unpublished data should be cited directly in the text by the first author, without being numbered. For revised manuscripts, the authors need to check all the citations in the Reference Section.

Web references

The full URL of the material should be given with the date when the reference was last accessed. Any further information, if known (DOI, author names, dates, reference to a source publication, etc.), should also be given. Web references can be listed separately (e.g., after the reference list) or can be included in the reference list.

The statistical methods

Special or complex statistical methods should be explained and referenced in the text. Meanwhile complex analyses should be performed with the assistance of a qualified statistician. The actual p values – whether significant or not – should always be presented (not n.s.). For small data sets and if variable distributions are non-normal, distribution free (non-parametric) statistical methods should be used. Continuous variables can always be summarized using the median and range which are therefore preferred. Only in the infrequent case of a normal distribution are the mean and standard deviation (SD) useful. Confidence intervals convey more information than p values and should be presented whenever possible. Complex analyses (including Cox and logistic regression analysis) should be presented in sufficient detail: i.e., variable scoring, regression coefficients, standard errors and any constants. Odds-ratios or relative risks are not sufficient documentation of such analyses. The handling of any missing values in the data should be clearly specified. Figures showing individual observations e.g., scatter plots and histograms are encouraged. An independent statistician is a part of the editorial board of the journal and statistical review of the paper will be sought when necessary.

Units

Use the internal system of units (SI). If other units are mentioned please give their equivalent in SI. For more information check

http://www.apsstylemanual.org/resources/unitsOfMeasurement/siDerived.htm

Drugs and chemicals

The source of reagents should be stated (name, city, and state within parentheses) when first cited. Drugs and chemicals should be used by generic name. If trademarks are mentioned, proprietary (trademarked) names should be capitalized, with the spelling carefully checked.

III- REVIEW PROCESS

Manuscripts will be screened upon submission and only the manuscripts, which fully comply with the submission requirements outlined will enter the peer review process.

First submission

After a successful submission of the manuscript, an acknowledgement will be sent by e-mail to the corresponding author. All further correspondence will be with the corresponding author. The number of the manuscript should be used for further communications with the Editorial Office. The manuscripts will be reviewed by the Editors and papers that are not considered by the editors to be strong candidates for publication or outside the scope of the Journal will be returned to the authors without detailed review, typically within 3-5 days. Otherwise, manuscripts will be sent to reviewers. After review, the corresponding author will be informed via e-mail. The author will be notified by letter of the decision taken by the Editor(s). This letter will be accompanied in most, but not all, cases by the comments of the reviewers.

Resubmission

In some cases, authors will be invited to submit a revised version of the manuscript for further review. In general, revised manuscripts must be received in the Editorial Office within four months of the date of the first decision. Authors should submit the resubmitted manuscript with all changes underlined. The resubmitted manuscript should be accompanied by a cover letter stating that the manuscript has been revised according to the comments made by the Editor and the Reviewers. Figures and tables must be uploaded. Please ensure that a separate point by point response to the reviewers is included with the covering letter. Revised manuscripts should be uploaded in the Editorial System website.

Proofs

Proofs will be made available to the author(s) to be checked. It is the responsibility of the author(s) to make sure that the quality and accuracy of the manuscript, figures, and tables in the proofs is correct. Authors should return their proofs within 48 hours, by fax or e-mail if the corrections are minor, to expedite publication.

Publishing fees

Submission and publication are free of charge.

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